At last, Orioles injury list players are beginning to return to action. The O’s activated two injured players on Sunday morning, ahead of the series finale against the Tigers: reliever Jacob Webb and outfielder Heston Kjerstad. In tandem, the team assigned pitcher Cole Irvin and position player Nick Maton, who are rarely used, to other positions. Manager Brandon Hyde had made hints about Webb’s coming as recently as yesterday. After missing nearly a month and a half due to elbow pain, the right-handed reliever completed a successful minor league rehab assignment. Prior to his injury, Webb had a 3.08 ERA and 1.168 WHIP. He had been the losing pitcher in five games and had pitched both well and poorly at times.
Although the indicators seemed to indicate that Kjerstad would return soon, it was not thought that he would return as soon as today. Before the team made the announcement, Rich Dubroff of Baltimore Baseball was the first to learn of the change. Midway through July, Kjerstad was hit in the head by a pitch from the Yankees, resulting in a concussion.
Kjerstad was placed on the concussion list for a short while at first, but the Orioles and Kjerstad concluded that the concussion symptoms had persisted when he had trouble returning and was demoted to the minors. Because a player must accrue MLB service time if he is injured while playing for an MLB team, he was brought back to the team and placed on the injured list once more. Throughout the season, Kjerstad has batted.261/.370/.420 in 28 games for the Orioles. Right now, the scuffling O’s offence could use it.
Since joining the squad on September 2, Maton, 27, has appeared in all five plate appearances over the course of five games. Against the plate, he went 0–5. This is Irvin’s second assignment designation from the Orioles this season. He is thirty years old. It appears that the team does not want to keep him around if he is not good enough to stay in the starting rotation, which he has not done. When Webb came back, I assumed Burch Smith (6.20 ERA) would be the first to be benched. It isn’t as awful as Irvin’s 4.86 ERA.
Leave a Reply